Overwhelmed
by Willowtreemuse
Summary: A missing scene from 3x14, in which Casey comes to talk to Maura before he leaves again.


She finds him sitting on her doorstep, and for a second she thinks he's lost - or that he's finally figured out Jane basically lives with her….and she doesn't know what to do.

But when she steps out the front door, blinking owlishly down at him for a few seconds before crouching beside him on the stairs like he's a time bomb about to explode, he just turns his head and smiles at her.

But there are tears in his eyes - and Maura, poor Maura, she has no idea why she has to see this, she doesn't know how to deal with a man like Casey in pain. Not when she hardly feels for him at all. Not when, though she feels sympathy for him, she still has to pretend to like him, every time Jane says his name.

"Casey." She states, and it doesn't come out as sweetly as she hoped. It's a demand. It's a 'pull yourself together and tell me what you're doing here", even through her tender smile. Thankfully, he gets the message and takes it gracefully, swallows roughly and says,

"I didn't tell her."

He wrings his hands and Maura is sickened with herself, with the fact that even to sooth him, she wouldn't touch them. They've been places that her hands have never been - but have they touched Jane's like hers have? Have they massaged the scars?

He breaks her out of her pondering, and her heart lurches because,

"I didn't tell her the surgery might kill me,"

Why was he telling her this?

"I'm sorry," she says thickly. She's sorry because he's probably going to die. She's sorry because Jane is hurting, and this would hurt her even more. She's sorry because he is a coward.

"I don't want you to be sorry!" He snaps, lashing out, but then he takes a deep breath and lowers his voice again, and his eyes connect with hers so intimately that although all she wants to do is look away, she can't seem to. "I don't - I just want to know she's taken care of, when I'm gone. Even if I survive, no matter what…I'm no good for her."

It is now that she darts her eyes away, staring off into the foggy night. "What do you expect me to do?"

"I know you love her," he confesses, and she can hear the wince in his voice, the deep tremble of the words he never wanted to utter. Her brain all but fries as she tries to comprehend the levity of the situation, but even as she fails at that she opens her mouth and she's talking, saving, _protecting_ herself,

"I - yes, I love her very much. As - a friend, but…"

Because she's a coward too.

"Dr. Isles," he interrupts, tiredly, and the formality strikes her as odd, until she thinks, well, maybe he no longer wants to be connected intimately with the woman who is so intimate with the love of his life.

No, the love of _her_ life….and suddenly, everything seems so easy,

"I love her," she whispers, a confession.

"So do I,"

and everything seems so impossible again.

But he marches on, even though she's fighting a gasp and trying not to clutch at her heart, and if she said that she was okay right now, she'd be breaking out in hives and -

"So do I!" He says again, just to interrupt her floundering - and if she was Jane she'd snap, "yea? Rub it in, will ya?" but since she's not, she silently cries, a tear sliding down her cheek - "but, even if my legs heal and everything turns out alright, if they called me back to Afghanistan?…I'd go. I love her, I always will. But I'd go. I would leave her…"

He touches her knee, and she tries not to flinch away, instead taking it as the cue that it is - a cue to look at him, again.

"You…Maura," her name chokes out of him like a mixture between a prayer and a curse, "That's the difference between you and me. You never leave her."

She nods, because it's the truth. And he repeats it again,

"Never leave her." As he gets up on shaky legs, all metal crutches and brute arm strength, she nods again. This time, it sounds like a soldier's command. And she promises herself, right then, that though she'd never bow down to the words of a too-proud soldier, she would do this. For herself…for him. For Jane.

"Jane" she whispers it into the night, as Casey vanishes from sight, and she realizes that she has never had more of a reason to stay alive. She wonders if Casey could be cowardly enough to die, with the raw energy of that woman living in his heart.

She decides it doesn't matter. He'd seen the way Maura looks at her. And maybe he'd even seen Jane looking back. He'd given up long ago. One way or another…he was never going to return.

She gets up from her porch, conscious of how easy it is for her to do so, and smiles sadly as she enters her home, knowing that a lonely detective who had cried herself to sleep lies waiting in her bed, just looking for some comfort.

(She hopes that's not all she'll ever be. But she's hopelessly devoted… So she'll take it anyway).


End file.
